Cell phone helps Japanese stay fit

TOKYO Oct 3 Worried that you're not getting
enough exercise or that you've eaten way too much garlic? A
Japanese firm has come up with a phone that can help.

Japan's largest cell phone carrier NTT DoCoMo (9437.T)
unveiled this week a "Fitness Phone," designed to help the user
stay healthy -- and avoid bad breath.

The handheld phone, equipped with various devices that can
measure your pulse or the amount of steps you've taken in a
day, dispenses heath advice after you've punched in statistics
such as gender, age and weight.

And you can also exhale into the phone and it will tell you
whether its time to reach for the breath mints.

"Our primary target groups would be fat-fighting
middle-aged businessmen and young women on diets," said Kentaro
Endo, a spokesman for NTT DoCoMo.

A recent government survey found that on average, Japanese
men in their 40s were fatter than they were 12 years ago,
mainly due to lack of exercise, while women in the same age
group were slimmer because they were more health conscious.